The "mainstream media" claim that they finely sift information to offer their customers only the most trustworthy information. That obviously does not apply to Politico or their reporter Ken Vogel. On Saturday, they stooped to an article headlined "Marco Rubio as vice president: the Bilderberg conspiracy?"

Vogel even included this line: "Paranoid? Perhaps. But like any good conspiracy theory, there’s just enough there to stoke questions." Then there was plenty of publicity for the "Bilderberg obsessives" and radio host Alex Jones:

John Edwards’s speech to the Bilderberg Group’s 2004 meeting in Stresa, Italy, reportedly helped clinch his selection as that year’s Democratic vice presidential candidate. And Jim Johnson, the man who chaired that vice presidential selection process and initially was tasked with spearheading Barack Obama’s 2008 search for a running mate, is a leading Bilderberg member, while prominent Romney advisers including Robert Kagan and Vin Weber have attended past meetings, as have Bill Clinton, Donald Rumsfeld and top finance, media and tech executives.

“These are influential folks — and they’ve all got friends in American politics — so if they see somebody that impresses them or doesn’t, I expect that they would pass that view on,” said Weber, a former Minnesota congressman who has attended two Bilderberg meetings. “But I would tell all of those bloggers and protestors to save their outrage for a real conspiracy, because this is just a conference.”

That assessment is rejected as pure spin by the international community of Bilderberg obsessives. They’re convinced that the meeting is ground zero in an worldwide plot by big banks, mainstream media, defense contractors and governments to suppress working people around the world.

This year, anti-Bilderberg activists are planning an “OccupyBilderberg” protest outside the Westfield Marriott in Chantilly, Va., where they believe the group will hold its conference May 31-June 3...

Radio host Alex Jones, a hero on the anti-government fringe who also runs Infowars, this month told the Russian government-funded cable network Russia Today that at their upcoming meeting Bilderberg attendees will decide on “wars with Iran, ways to censor the Internet … how to sell the public on more banker bailouts” and “how to ram through carbon taxes.”

But the most immediate issue on the agenda, he said, will be a decision on “Should the elite get behind Mitt Romney or Barack Obama? Both men are bought and paid for by the same financial interests, and so the discussion will be which candidate can basically con the American people into laying down to tyranny for another four years.”

The pending Bilderberg meeting is “one of the most important globalist meetings ever,” said Jones, who has tried to crash past Bilderberg meetings and called for “tens of thousands” to turn out at the Marriott.

Vogel even closes by bowing to the Bilderberg-obsessive counter-argument:

The Washington Post’s [Al] Kamen, meanwhile, laughed when told how his column had spawned a theory that the Bilderberg meeting was going to tap Rubio as Romney’s running mate.